Publication Abstracts
Morales-Castilla et al. 2020
Morales-Castilla, I., I. García de Cortázar-Atauri, , T. Lacombe, A. Parker, C. van Leeuwen, K.A. Nicholas, and E.M. Wolkovich, 2020: Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 117, no. 6, 2864-2869, doi:10.1073/pnas.1906731117.
Increasing diversity within crops may be a powerful way to reduce agricultural declines from climate change. As such, it has garnered increasing attention, especially in documenting within-crop diversity through different cultivars or wild relatives. Yet, there are few tests of whether this diversity can mitigate losses with warming. Here, using European (predominantly French) databases to forecast winegrape phenology, we test if shifting cultivars changes predictions of future growing regions. We find that cultivar diversity halved potential losses of winegrowing regions under a 2°C warming scenario and could reduce losses by a third if warming reaches 4°C. Thus, diversity — if adopted by growers locally — can mitigate agricultural losses, but its effectiveness will depend on global decisions regarding future emissions.Agrobiodiversity — the variation within agricultural plants, animals, and practices — is often suggested as a way to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on crops [S. A. Wood et al., Trends Ecol. Evol. 30, 531-539 (2015)]. Recently, increasing research and attention has focused on exploiting the intraspecific genetic variation within a crop [Hajjar et al., Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 123, 261-270 (2008)], despite few relevant tests of how this diversity modifies agricultural forecasts. Here, we quantify how intraspecific diversity, via cultivars, changes global projections of growing areas. We focus on a crop that spans diverse climates, has the necessary records, and is clearly impacted by climate change: winegrapes (predominantly Vitis vinifera subspecies vinifera). We draw on long-term French records to extrapolate globally for 11 cultivars (varieties) with high diversity in a key trait for climate change adaptation — phenology. We compared scenarios where growers shift to more climatically suitable cultivars as the climate warms or do not change cultivars. We find that cultivar diversity more than halved projected losses of current winegrowing areas under a 2°C warming scenario, decreasing areas lost from 56 to 24%. These benefits are more muted at higher warming scenarios, reducing areas lost by a third at 4°C (85% versus 58%). Our results support the potential of in situ shifting of cultivars to adapt agriculture to climate change — including in major winegrowing regions — as long as efforts to avoid higher warming scenarios are successful.
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BibTeX Citation
@article{mo06200a,
author={Morales-Castilla, I. and García de Cortázar-Atauri, I. and Cook, B. I. and Lacombe, T. and Parker, A. and van Leeuwen, C. and Nicholas, K. A. and Wolkovich, E. M.},
title={Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses},
year={2020},
journal={Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.},
volume={117},
number={6},
pages={2864--2869},
doi={10.1073/pnas.1906731117},
}
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RIS Citation
TY - JOUR ID - mo06200a AU - Morales-Castilla, I. AU - García de Cortázar-Atauri, I. AU - Cook, B. I. AU - Lacombe, T. AU - Parker, A. AU - van Leeuwen, C. AU - Nicholas, K. A. AU - Wolkovich, E. M. PY - 2020 TI - Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses JA - Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. VL - 117 IS - 6 SP - 2864 EP - 2869 DO - 10.1073/pnas.1906731117 ER -
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